Soulful Muse

Don’t Hesitate

by Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

“Thanksgiving Day?” One day? Why not make it a week of thankfulness? A day, sanctioned by the government [which many of you abhor, “Even more government control”], to honor one day which the Church honors each and every day as we gather at this holy, thanksgiving table.

“Thank you.” Thank you to what and to whom? Thankful for what and for why? All our personal reflections as this November week slowly unfolds.

We may passingly remember “thankful memories” during a day’s passing moments. But, this week, this only week, can we mindfully recount, embrace, remember and now…more importantly relive the thankfulness that was extended to us, the thankfulness that happened to us and the thankfulness that we extended to those we love and especially those whose names we’ve touched but never knew.

The longer you live the more thankful you become, both about your life and the all events and the happenings that happened to you.

And now, in November’s third week, we sincerely thank those thoughtful people who either sought us out or we sought providing two simple words.

“Thank you” for thanking someone for something that’s expected of them? That’s not Thanksgiving, that’s called, “service.” Still, it’s important.

“Thank you” no longer becomes two words for a deed done or a done deed. “Thank you” becomes a bond. A bond between you and God and now a bond between you and that special person you thanked or the one who thanked you.

(Housekeeper, first parish says to me, “Thank you for thinking of thanking me.” I smiled and never forgot.)

Gospel of Matthew

¹¹⁹ Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. ²⁰ And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ ²¹ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.^[c] You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ ²² And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ ²³ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ ²⁴ He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, ²⁵ so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ ²⁶ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? ²⁷ Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. ²⁸ So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. ²⁹ For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. ³⁰ And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Game show host, Bill Cullen, is the first host of “The Price is Right” for nine years. However, there’s only just one teeny-weeny, little hiccup. Due to childhood polio he could only walk a few steps. The studio built him a nice podium to stand behind the entire show. He went on to host twenty-two other game shows.

You initially suspect, then begin to dream, then test and retest again and again and again.

It’s the birth of a talent, whether it’s five or one, living and slowly simmering within you that, well, wants to let itself grow and mature. A “talent,” as Jesus calls us it in the gospel but we believe it to be gift, a divine gift.

To bury the talent, for safe keeping as though it has no expiration date, as the sorry, last fellow did to protect himself and not lose himself to the glory and honor of God.

Talents require training and lots of practice but that suspicion and that dream, and those tests, multiple tests, only earns us those Christ-like dividends that have absolutely nothing to do with money but yields the worth and worthiness of our lives.

Aspiring talent? Third grade and the nun calls on the young boy and asks him to say his name. He stutters away and the class bursts out in laughter.

“Bury it,” he must’ve thought to himself walking home. His family only chimed in with the classmates’ laughter.

“Just get on with your life and bury it, It’s only a possible talent, who will ever even notice?”

Country singer Mel Tillis stutters away his interview with Johnny Carson. The interview ends by Mel singing a flawless country ballad. One talent – UNburied – unveiled – unfolded and UNfolding.

But back to that young kid. After taking care of grandmother’s lawn duties and enjoying her treat of braunschweiger, on rye with onions, she takes her afternoon nap. Her second empty bedroom became his invisible stage to perform as a gameshow host. Holding her spatula as his microphone, he dreamed away. He became Bill Cullen. It was glorious afternoons spent totally in his mind with an imaginary audience applauding until 3:00 pm. He then needed to replace her spatula before she woke up.

Growing up he listened to Chicago’s WLS and WCFL disc jockeys talk away and into the beginning of a rock song. He stutteringly suspected…dreamed…and tested that talent. However, there’s only just one teeny-weeny, little hiccup. Over thirty years on the radio and over forty years as a priestly preacher.

What talent has strengthened your relationship with God and then expressed and shared in and through others? You don’t need five of them…you only need one. Even the difficult one.

The last servant sadly says to his Lord, “I hid and buried your one talent Lord [given to me] only to give it back to you [unused] fearing you [or, really, fearing myself] what you would have done to me. [And, what I could have done with it.] I’m sorry.”

The sun begins to set on this November night as I look out my kitchen window. The bright sun that lit my day, all day long, slowly turns to glowing, multiple, softer colors to soften the transition to my night’s dawn.

Unfortunately for us today, we merely turn on more lights and even more lights to assure us that the sun is still lit and will remain brightly lit.

The darkness of night brings about a restful sleep to begin a new sunny day. But now, while still awake, it is complete darkness outside my kitchen window. Darkness. Darkness surrounds me but never, ever envelopes me. Darkness quiets me. Darkness gives me unbounded space. Darkness gives me that pause that sun does not allow. Darkness gives me far more than me.

Doing and performing? That’s the task of sunlight. Darkness? The darkness of light empowers us with a perfect spiritual opportunity for reflection. “Darkness of light! Oxymoron? Not a chance.

Turn off some of those evening lights. Immerse, revel yourself into the darkness that is the most important part of your evolving life.

Unfinished business? Lifted up to God, complete with a thankful heart. Hope? Only with the grace of God can you continue. Resolution? Sometimes it is simply over, or there maybe a sunny tomorrow. Regret finally forgiven and forgotten? The best of all, dissipated and dissolved into the mystery of life. Peace of God? Far beyond the daily sun offerings but savoring God’s melancholy sunsets together with God’s entwining midst into the unraveling of our darknesses.

“Good night.” It can take on a new and more meaningful expression for you and for those whom you wish it.

Two significant Catholic days separated by a quick, single … one second. “All Saints” followed by “All Souls.” As though they are not the same, we need to separate them.
 Separate? Apart? Not the same? Not equal? Not in my world.

Like any young person and now an older one, you still and always begin with your parents and then move onward meeting others throughout your life.

My Dad did not have a wheel with spikes rolled over his body. (Catherine of Alexandria.) Mom was never beheaded (unlike how many other saints) but, sorrowfully, beheaded herself through her unreconcilable lifelong pains that haunted and hindered her from the person she aspired to be.

Both souls? You bet. Both saints? You can bet once again. My gentle, super-introverted, quiet dad provided a home for five loud kids. As adult children, he sat next to our kitchen fireplace, smoking his cigar and intently listened to the recent dramas from each of us. Each without opinion or comment. Mother? Never missed preparing nutritious meals for five growing children complete with ingredients and vitamins unheard of in the fifties. Both souls or are saints? You judge.

Yet, please don’t judge. We have only one Judge. Our life’s gift is to observe and look at all the souls we encounter and then witness the saintliness they show us. I encountered many souls during my years and, yes, I’ve also been keenly respectful for the sainthood that each one possesses.

It takes the Church generations to generate a saint while we come across souls every single day. What is the distance between the two? One second. Or, is it a single, selfless moment or a lifelong friendship that that soul becomes a saint?

In writing this, I recall many saints/souls persons in my life. They don’t have a Church’s date but they have me. They have me every day. They help me look in the morning mirror while brushing my teeth wondering if I’ll remain a soul and will I be a saint?

Or, better yet, why can’t I be both?

For newcomers to Alexian Village, here’s my sad “All Saints List.” For those who know me, you’ve probably forgotten, so here’s my sad list once more.

Tiffany, Courtney, Heather, Tracy, and Brittany.

Poor things have no one to personally pray to. They are unable to mirror or manage the behavior and actions of a saint in their own lives. Someone to whom aspire, inspire, move, rouse, stir, animate, fire the imagination, and most importantly, encourage.

For that is what those who lived among us did and now do within us. Their lived lives now become verbs. Action words. Words that lead to action. Saints.

Why else would the Church create and use the past lives of men and women to continue living actively in the lives of those named after them?

In the Beatitudes, Jesus cleverly, as usual, holds out opposites to make a positive, pious point. He takes an extortionist named Matthew to write for us his beautiful Gospel. He takes a Jew-killer, blinds him for a while, and whose writings we hear at every single Mass. Changes his name to Paul, smart move Jesus.

To be gender-neutral, there’s also Leroy, Harold, Walter (my dad), and Horace. Poor guys … and gals.

Jesus even endows Oscar for his saintly-lived life in El Salvador for the benefit of the truly least fortunate. And, nobody names their kid Judas but what a potent name. If it wasn’t for Judas Jesus would not have been crucified, which last time I checked, is a pretty important part of our salvation story.

Yet, there is hope for those sadly named guys and gals. We offer adoption to them holthis day. Pray that they uncover a hero/heroine that we call “saint’ adding some of those active verbs making their life’s journey holy, meaningful, and worthy.

So, to Leroy, Tiffany, Harold, Courtney, Walter, Tracy, Horace, and Brittany? Good luck.

To those of us carrying and bearing saintly names, we can only say, “thank you” to our parents and hope that those names walk us with us throughout our lives.

Oh, by the way, my great niece’s name? Nova. I rest my case.

It is so damn easy to dismissively and unproductively damaging to reduce a parent to those three darn Witches, “Coulda,” “Woulda,” and “Shoulda.”

It is damaging to your memories and in your rememberings. My heart and soul about her, many years after her passing, are the “D” words listed below. (I used four “D” words already in a disparaging way. Well, okay, five times.) Find a letter for your Mother that healthfully retrieves and smilingly finds a place within you.

By her deliberate compassion about my failing grades, an ouched finger, or well deserved spanking. The discipline she showed us five about the importance of observing Catholic practices and rituals. Those deliciously many-full, healthy, flavored stews and casseroles. A dedicated discipline in raising growing children, well into her fifties. In spite of her own devolving person-hood, her devotion always to family first. With a quiet husband strapped to his easy chair next to the fireplace, she devoted love, from both of them, to the five of us. Daringly, her solo summer weekly trips to a cottage with only her wit, wisdom, and whims to humor us five. Through her love of music, she duplicated for each of us a deep, continuing love for music of all kinds.

Decidedly impaired in her personal life but only exhibited to a few. Deadly, my mother found her well earned eternal peace.

And, now her five fulfilled, retired, children bi-weekly Zoom even as the virus subsides. We talk seriously about politics mixed with comical family humor (many times the politics spills into humor). However, during those Zooms, spoken or silent, is the continuing rememberings and re-memorizings of our, my, “D” labeled Mother.

PS. I love the “W’s,” I could have fun with those.

“Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under roof…”

Unworthy? Ummm…

Abraham was not only too old but enjoyed the company of a mistress and it wasn’t tea and crumpets. Abraham’s wife boldly laughed at God, Noah was a drunk. Mary was nervous. Miriam was a gossip. Jacob was a deceiver. Lazarus died and needed to die again. John the Baptist loses his head over a silly pledge. The great King David had his best friend killed so he could marry his wife. What’s your excuse for your unworthiness?

For his done deeds, Judas needs no introduction to belong to this motley group. Moses stuttered and was refused entry into the promised land. What’s your excuse for your unworthiness?

Peter constantly tries to impress Jesus. Thomas gets the adjective “doubting” added before his name until reality faces him in the face. Matthew kept his tax license, just in case. Brothers James and John? They both butted heads about who’s the better person. What’s your excuse for your unworthiness?

It’s an endless list of struggling Biblical believers that looks a lot like a bunch of comedic characters in a TV show that we laugh about and move on to the next comedy. Yet, this is real. This is our faith and hearing about the faith of those who’ve gone before us.

These are our forebears before, during and after Jesus. This is where we enter this comedic, serious drama of life. Before receiving the Body of Christ we admit we are not worthy…who is!? It is exactly our unworthiness that prompts us to prayer and to gather here.

We come to this sacrament as the broken people that we are to be united, once and every time after, to join our lives with the foibles and follies of centuries old people. What wonderful and complex company we keep.

And is the question, in spite of who we are or is the question because of who we are.

A philosopher writes, “What is it that you desire, you who aim at perfection? Give yourselves full scope. Your wishes need have no measure. However much you may desire I can show you how to attain it, even though it be infinite…the present, [this very moment, this very passing minute] is ever filled with infinite treasure, it contains more than you have capacity to hold.”

Pope Francis in “Evangelii Gaudium,” The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew.”

Let’s form that “before receiving Communion statement” not as a statement but as a question. “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under roof?” Come on, Lord. You’ve gotta be kidding me.

Be glad you are not worthy or else there is no other reason for us to be here. Just recall and remember the crazy company we keep.